Rebecca Grossman-Kahn
WHEN YOU CALL HIS MOTHER FROM THE PSYCH UNIT

When you call his mother, give yourself time. A half hour, at least. Give up on the idea of beating rush hour traffic home. Swipe your badge and enter through the doors of the inpatient psychiatry unit, the one with the conference room you know will be empty at 4:00 p.m.  Settle into the sparse room with its echoes and afternoon sun at a low September angle. See the light descending toward the parking structure, casting sharp lines through the metal blinds and a glare on your computer screen.

Before you make the call, notice your pinging hunger. Slip into the kitchenette off the unit and pilfer a few packets of saltines. As you walk back to the conference room, notice the faint smell of body odor and cafeteria coffee and vegetable soup. Feel the slight pull of the lanyard ID badge against the thin muscles of your neck. Clasp your hand around the keys clinking together, bringing attention to your power, your unearned escape, your license to leave. Muffle the sound with your fingers.

You’ll be tempted to use speakerphone, to type notes as you talk or to relieve your hand from holding the phone. Don’t. Bring the receiver to your ear and feel your arm work to keep it there. His mother will notice the difference in the sound of your voice, in the proximity, in your attention.

When you call his mother, describe the day’s events. Her son asked for a liver transplant to get rid of the foreign tracking device that’s been plaguing him. He believes he is a spy and is targeted by foreign governments. At least he’s talking to staff. Perhaps a bit less paranoid. He’s getting along with the other patients.

Don’t show your cards: that you’re fascinated by his delusion about the tracking device, still eager to learn the neurobiology that might explain it. Instead, report that you’ve dialed his medication up so he won’t swing a baseball bat in the street around other people again.

Are you sure? Mom asks.

Yes? You ask back. At least, pretty sure. Mostly sure. Try not to feel nauseated as you stare at the mustard-colored walls and listen to Mom’s silence. Massage the thin muscles of your neck and wonder how just a hospital ID and some keys can cause such strain.

Beyond the conference room door, hear the clatter of the dinner trays wheeled in. The TV on in the background. The whirring of a card deck shuffled and then the snap-snap of cards slapped onto a vinyl table. The sound of chairs—too heavy to lift by design—scratching across the floor. The sounds of the hushed boredom of the unit in the afternoon.

When Mom finally sighs the heaviest sigh you’ve ever heard, let it linger. You’re new to this, but she’s not. That’s okay. Listen to her sigh. When she sounds hopeless, know it’s not because you are hopeless. It’s because she’s lost her son. Her board game-loving, red-haired college freshman. And you can’t get him back. Not all the way. You haven’t learned that lesson yet, but that’s okay.

When you talk to his mother, don’t mention the drawings he’s been making in occupational therapy art group. Don’t say you think they’re beautiful, profound, worthy of an art show. Because Mom has seen more of his art than you have. The twisted lines and unexpected color juxtapositions—where you see a unique perspective, Mom sees her beautiful son’s mixed-up thoughts.

When you talk to his mother, you’re learning what she knows about her son that you don’t yet know. That you’re one young doctor of nine whom she’ll speak to this year. When Mom isn’t interested in your opinion that his auditory hallucinations have slightly improved, it’s because she already knows what will come next. She’ll hear the hope in your voice, and know you’re new.

Rebecca Grossman-Kahn is a writer and psychiatrist living in the Midwest. Her creative nonfiction work has been published or is forthcoming in Roanoke Review, Bellevue Literary Review, The Examined Life Journal, the New England Journal of Medicine, and The Intima. Rebecca Grossman-Kahn is working on a book of essays about psychiatry and medical training.

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